It's the Economists Stupid
Economists like to think they are scientists but for the most part they are shilling for the powers that be. We won't get out of this mess, until we call them on their shell game, broaden our thinking about how and for whom the economy works and take matters into our own hands.
What makes economists think they are doing science? Economists say they collect data and test their theories against facts. They ask how well their models predict outcomes. They portray themselves as providing policy makers with facts; it is the policy makers who make policy who gets the tax break; who gets fired; who gets fed.
If you or I criticize their methods we are written off as unscientific, having an agenda, somehow weak minded.
Scratch the surface of this faade and it quickly crumbles. Economists rely on theories riddled with normative judgments more is better, work is a disutility, it is rational to be self-interested we act independently, we are rational, labor is a resource.
Economists pretend to be an objective but their tests depend on their theory. There is no objective measure, outside of theory, to test their theories. Nor can economists predict the future. Yet economists think they are doing science, science devoid of curiosity.
Don't think I'm saying that one cannot do economics at all, only that any number of approaches to economics, be it institutional, feminist, Marxist or ecological, is possible. Each theory defines the economy differently, describes human behavior differently, and comes to different conclusions about what to do. One cannot claim as mainstream economists do, that only their approach is correct; only their approach produces a rational view of the world. That's pure hubris. Hubris got us into this mess and it won't get us out.
Richard Posner, the well-regarded Chicago school economists who recently declared he is now a Keynesian. Keynes the conservative knows that without intervention, and at least a veneer of legitimacy, the capitalist system is doomed. Why has the breakdown of the world economic system yielded only one such convert?
The scientific community, I mean the real one, has its own problems with objectivity, but most scientists agree that we have to act very quickly to avoid catastrophic climate change. Throwing the door open to corporate dominance of politics is irrational the legal equivalent of the final scene from Thelma and Louise only with straight white men driving all of us over a cliff.
Don't be impressed by the men in suits. Don't listen to the pseudo-scientific babble of the high priests of the economy. Take things in your own hands, work for what's right, make a bold move in the direction of the common good. We have to do it now we have no time to waste.
Excepted from David Kristjanson-Gural
